The winds that were predicted by the weather services to kick up and be scary yesterday during the daylight hours never arrived. Instead they showed up last evening, arriving with the darkness. The wind was howling and very gusty. A sudden and very loud slam alerted us to the fact that the screen door (which was not fully latched at the time) decided that it liked the field across the street better than our door frame. Perhaps I exaggerate just a little, it didn’t quite make it to the other side of the street, traveling a few feet down the driveway instead. We reclaimed what was left and now scratch our heads because we now have a very large doggie door (minus the flap part) that could easily fit two goats stacked on top of each other.

SAY WHAT? GOAT DOOR???

(Hmmm… before those goats get any ideas, maybe we should just forget I said that.)

Could always have been worse… we could have had flying doors and flying goats. We must always see the bright side….always.

Tom realized just a few minutes ago that the hard drive on the computer that runs the weather station has died, taking the weather station and its data offline. Hopefully, he will be able to recover the data — it’s one of those things. He was commenting that he needed to do a backup since he knew that the hard drive was getting old, and before that could happen, it went.

We have had the weather station for about ten years. The boys and I bought it as a gift for Tom when we first bought our house up here and way before we ever moved to Vermont. It is funny how somethings become ingrained in your life and you take them for granted, until of course, they stop working.

It was very matter-of-fact to check the weather in our own backyard, as a good number of you also do, as I can tell from comments on the blog. In fact, just yesterday we were checking it regularly to find out exactly what speed that wind that was whipping outside our house was registering.

So, now we will be weather-data-less for a bit until the new hard drive is up and running. Guess we’ll have to relay on the old-fashioned stick your head out the window weather reporting for a bit.

The wind is howling like mad today. The trees are blowing back and forth like they are dancing. This morning when I woke it was 50 degrees and raining. Now it is almost freezing and snowing.

Yesterday, we reached upwards of almost 60 degrees, it didn’t do well for the snow that we had gotten the day before and the snow that still was on the ground. Things started to look and feel like spring…but wrong. It is not even February yet, it can’t be spring much less mud season.

Here is a picture from the road from yesterday. Add crazy wind and half as much snow and you can imagine what it looks like this morning.

-11 outside this morning but it has warmed up…..to -4. They are forecasting winds picking up this afternoon to 25 mile per hour gusts which will account for windchill temperatures near -50 by the ridge of the Green Mountains (which happens to be us).

Winter has arrived without a doubt.

Stay warm and cover up if you have to venture outside, even if it’s only a quick run outside to the car.

This morning I went to open the screen door to let the dog out and I thought that my fingers were going to stick to the metal handle.

The boys all wore coats to school. For those of you who know the boys, yes, it’s that cold outside.

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Today is the beginning of a sunny, clear streak of weather here. Weather forecasters are predicting that it will be sunny and beautiful, clear and warm through Sunday. Quite honestly, I think that this will be the longest stretch of clear, sunny weather that we have had in a really long time.

It has been a spring so far filled with rainy days or days in which rain will fall at some point with very few streaks of sunny clear, blue sky weather. The garden deserves some sunshine, seeds are slow to germinate because the ground is still quite chilled and the sun just hasn’t been around long and strong enough to warm it up. Hopefully with the next few sunny days, summer will be making its appearance here in Vermont. Right in time for the end of the school year.

Today is the second day that we woke up to it snowing. Yesterday, at some points it looked more like the middle of February rather than the middle of April. Literally, it was snowing so hard you couldn’t see and the snow was accumulating — the grass was covered as were all the lawn furniture and flower beds. Mother Nature is either a bit backwards this year or she has a really weird sense of humor. Perhaps she is just in perpetual April Fool’s mode this month. Either way, not much seeing the humor in it.

My poor seedlings might never see the light of the outdoors if this keeps up – might as well turn the sun room into the garden this year. The wood stove is still blasting away here. If you didn’t look at the calendar you might not believe that it is in fact April. Oh, don’t get me wrong, we’ve had April snowstorms — real storms where we wound up with inches if not a foot or more of snow — but after a very mild and snow-free winter for the most part it really is very anti-climatic. We are ready for the nice weather, we are ready for the shades of color that come along with spring — we are not ready or happy about waking up to snow showers instead of rain showers.

Seems that spring on the calendar doesn’t mean too much. The weather this morning indicates that there is a winter storm watch with 7-14 inches of snow expected on Friday for our area. I guess that Mother Nature didn’t like those batches of bare ground in the photo from outside my window. Her thought….. I’ll fix that.

HAZARD TYPES...MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOWFALL. SNOW MAY BE MIXED
WITH RAIN AT TIMES FRIDAY AFTERNOON ACROSS THE LOWER ELEVATIONS.
* ACCUMULATIONS...4 TO 8 INCHES OF SNOW ACROSS LOWER ELEVATIONS
AND 7 TO 14 INCHES ABOVE 1000 FEET.
* TIMING...SNOW WILL OVERSPREAD THE REGION THURSDAY NIGHT FROM THE
SOUTH AND BECOME TO MODERATE TO HEAVY AT TIMES DURING FRIDAY
BEFORE TAPERING TO SNOW SHOWERS FRIDAY NIGHT.
* IMPACTS...HAZARDOUS TRAVEL CONDITIONS AND POSSIBLE POWER OUTAGES
DUE TO WET SNOW...ESPECIALLY ACROSS THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS.

… and yes, for those of you wondering, that is in fact a small (but visible) patch of ground at the base of the maple tree. Seems like maybe, just maybe, the calendar and Mother Nature might be on the same track. You wouldn’t know it of course, because it was still like 14 degrees here this morning.

It’s been a busy couple weeks. The boys were on vacation last week and we had company over the weekend, my family visiting from New Jersey, which is always nice. Unfortunately, my sister and her family couldn’t make it so the boys were a little bummed to not see their other cousins as well. This week the boys were back in school, but we still had company visiting with us. Our goddaughter, along with three friends and her mother came up during their winter break (of course the weeks didn’t coincide) to go skiing. I hope that the girls had a good time, since we had a good time hosting them. It was nice to have the hormones in the house tip in favor of estrogen for a change — as you can imagine I am sorely outnumbered most of the time. They left today after we had a nice girl’s lunch in Manchester.

Tonight into tomorrow night we’re forecast for a storm. The weather is forecasting about a foot of snow, lots of wind and blowing and drifting. Each time I look at the forecast, they are inching up the accumulation predictions, which is more than fine with me. I love, love, love a good “no one is going anywhere” snowstorm because it’s almost like Mother Nature telling us all to just slow down and relax. We are at the mercy of Mother Nature, as so many have learned during this very snowy winter across much of the country. I think that sometimes she just wanted to remind us of who, really is in charge. It is most certainly not us.

So….with an impending storm and cold blustery weather planned, it seems like a good excuse to hunker down and enjoy the winter before it’s over and mud season rears its ugly, messy, goopy head.

It can get really windy up here and when there’s snow on the ground, it can look like a mini-blizzard even if snow isn’t falling from the sky. We often comment about how very different our weather can be from weather in the surrounding areas, just due to the difference in our elevation. Our house is a 1,620 feet and that seems to make a world of difference. Yesterday I spent the afternoon and evening in Rutland being the POD (parent on duty) for Tim’s Odyssey team. While there were some flurries there, there were inches of snow here. Inches. Crazy.

No, it hasn’t been your imagination. It has been hot lately. In fact, it’s been hot everywhere lately. As in all over the world. According to NOAA, June has been the hottest June on record across the world. Literally, everywhere on this earth has been the warmest in June that it has been since they have been keeping records which by the way started in 1880. The largest concentration of warmer-than-average temperatures were located in the central and eastern United States, eastern and western Asia and Peru.

The Atlantic Ocean has recorded the warmest ocean surface temperatures in June and the average ocean temperatures for June were .97°F above the previous average of 61.5°F which was the 20th century average ocean temperature.